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‘And you,’ her mother continued, ‘are now a princess. Princess Ana of Vela Ada.’
Princess Ana of Vela Ada.
Ana turned away from her mother, away from the library, and stared out into the darkness. She was at just the right angle to see the Christmas tree at the end of the street.
And as her tears fell, all the coloured lights and the perfect white star at the top blurred together.
Castelrotto, Italy
Rhys North’s phone vibrated loudly, stirring him from his sleep.
He blinked at the time glowing green on the small digital clock on his bedside table: two a.m.
Adrenalin flooded his body. You didn’t receive good news in the middle of the night. Rhys knew this incontrovertibly. You don’t forget being shaken awake, or being told terrible news that made no sense, that didn’t seem possible.
He hadn’t forgotten the words that had changed his life, delivered just before three a.m. in a desert army camp: ‘I’m so sorry, mate. There was nothing anyone could do.’
But, he realised, his phone wasn’t ringing any more. The vibration had stopped almost as soon as it started.
He reached out, flipping his phone over to look at its glowing face.
The tension in his shoulders eased.
His mum had sent him a message.
Merry Christmas, darling!! Hope you have a wonderful day. We all wish you were here! xx
She had, once again, forgotten the significant time difference between his home in Northern Italy and hers in Australia.
The phone vibrated again. Another message.
Oh, crap, I forgot the time again, darling! So sorry to wake you! Love you to the moon! xx
His mum wouldn’t even have considered he’d slept through the first message, given she knew he’d become the lightest of sleepers in the four years since…
Rhys swung his legs over the edge of his bed and ran his hands through thick dark blond hair that was no longer buzz-cut-short. He was awake now, and he knew he wouldn’t fall asleep again easily without doing something physical to take the edge off. He kept both his treadmill and the wind trainer for his bike set up in the living room of his villa. During the day, the floor-to-ceiling windows that covered two entire walls of the large room offered him views of the surrounding mountains, the Dolomites, but now all he could see was darkness.
Rhys never bothered closing his curtains—he wouldn’t be much of a CEO of a security surveillance company if he allowed anyone close enough to look in without his permission.
On his treadmill, he barely warmed up before hitting the steepest incline setting and running as hard as he could, his bare feet slapping loudly in the silence. He ran until it hurt, and then ran some more, until finally he staggered off the machine, bare chest heaving, sweat drenching his skin.
Then he got into a cold shower and into bed, his skin still hot from such exertion.
He looked at his mum’s message again:
Merry Christmas, darling!! Hope you have a wonderful day.
He didn’t respond. He knew his mother wouldn’t expect him to.
Because he never did. Yet still, like clockwork, his mother called, sent messages, even sometimes posted letters.
As if one day he’d turn back into the son he once was. The man he once was…
Before.
Before the night he’d been shaken awake.
Before the panic attacks.
Before he became practically a recluse here amongst the mountains.
Merry Christmas, darling!! Hope you have a wonderful day.
Well, he wouldn’t have a wonderful day. He’d just have another day.
As it had been in the four years since he’d been shaken awake by his commanding officer, to be told of his young, healthy wife’s sudden death, Christmas was just another day.
Present day…
ANA TOMASICH, PRINCESS OF VELA ADA, was gripping her wedding bouquet so tightly that her freshly manicured fingernails bit painfully into the skin of her palm.
But that was a good thing. That small sting of pain gave her focus. It silenced everything in her surroundings—her bridesmaids, who giggled at the foot of the stone steps that led into the church, the yells of the paparazzi, who stood behind specially erected barriers, and the constant click of their cameras. The hollow, tinny sounds from a row of flagpoles with flapping ropes and Vela Ada flags, and somewhere in the distance seagulls calling as they circled above the nearby beach.
In fact, the only thing that pain didn’t silence was that soft, terribly polite voice she’d been ignoring for so long. The little voice inside her, standing square in front of her subconscious—the one she’d so determinedly pretended didn’t exist.
Until now.
Now, in this new, perfect silence, that voice was loud.
Loud, and calm and absolutely, irrefutably, certain:
This is a mistake.
The sting in her palm eased. Her fingers, so tight and firm, loosened.
And in the silence—in the only moment Ana could remember feeling in control since she’d discovered she was a princess—she let her bouquet fall to the ground.
She imagined she heard it hit the footpath, but that was impossible.
Because, of course, it wasn’t really silent.
Now she heard the noise. All the noise, and then even more noise, when, rather than retrieving her bouquet—as if dropping it had been an accident—she gave it a gentle kick to dislodge it from her satin-clad toes.
Her bridesmaids—colleagues from her old life at the library—hurried towards her, their faces matching studies of concern.
But she just shook her head, held up her hand—she wanted them to stay put—and turned and got back into the vintage Daimler she’d only just exited, slamming the door behind her.
Her driver—one of the palace drivers—caught her gaze in the rear-vision mirror.
His gaze ever professional, he simply asked a question: ‘Where to?’
‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘Not here. Anywhere but here.’
She swallowed as the gravity of what she’d just done began to descend upon her shoulders.
Yet she had no doubts.
This was the right decision.
‘Fast,’ she added.
And with a satisfying screech of tyres her driver complied.
* * *
Hours later, the Vela Ada royal family’s private jet landed at a small airport somewhere in Northern Italy. Ana didn’t know exactly where, and she really didn’t care. It was an irrelevant detail: being somewhere far from home was her number one priority.
Far from home, very far from the media and far from Petar.
Petar.